Acts 16:16

as we went to prayer Better, as we were going to the place of prayer, see on Acts 16:13. For though the Greek noun here is without the article it is clearly to be rendered as in the previous verse. This must have been on another occasion than that on which Lydia was converted. For in the expression "she constrained us" it seems implied that they had already taken up their abode there before the events recorded in this verse.

possessed with a spirit of divination More literally, and according to the oldest MSS. which make the two nouns in apposition, having a spirit, a Python. According to Plutarch (De def. Orac. 9) those persons who practised ventriloquism, called also ἐγγαστρίμυθοι, were named Pythons. But the damsel in this history clearly laid claim to some prophetic power, and was used as a means of foreknowing the future. So that word Python is here better referred to the name of Apollo, the heathen god of prophecy, and the A.V. "spirit of divination" gives the correct idea.

her masters Some persons, who having found a strange power in the maiden, made use of it, as has oft been done, for their own purposes of gain, and persuaded the people to resort unto her with their questions.

by soothsaying The word is only found here in the N. T., and wherever it occurs in the LXX. it is always used of the words of lying prophets (Deuteronomy 18:10; 1 Samuel 28:8; Ezekiel 13:6; Ezekiel 13:23; Micah 3:11); so that here we are constrained to take it in the same sense "by pretending to foretell the future."